Rotary object feeders having multiple pick-up heads are known. Having a feeder with three or more heads will provide improved efficiencies and speeds in the handling of objects. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,910,078 issued Jun. 8, 1999 to Guttinger et al., the contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference, discloses such a rotary feeder.
The rotary feeder in the aforementioned patent employs a plurality of pick-up heads, each pick-up head being driven by separate shafts and gearing mechanism interconnected to a central drive mechanism to provide for rotation which defines a cyclical path for each of the pick-up heads.
Having to provide separate drive shafts and gearing mechanisms for each pick-up head is particularly problematic for rotary feeders that have three or more separate pick-up heads, each head being capable of handling an object.
It is therefore desirable to improve the construction of rotary feeders having three or more pick-up heads.